RT-AC68U NAS transfer speed issue

[Helipil0t]

Ok so a quick setup description:

I'm running an AC68U router to which I have hooked up a Buffalo Linkstation NAS via ethernet, along with a few wireless N clients including two 2009 Macbook Pros.

So I bought this shiny new AC68U not too long ago plugged it in and out of the box was happy to see speeds of around 26 MB/sec when transferring files from my NAS. I figure on an N network, speeds of 200 Mbit/sec is pretty good. Once everything was setup with firmwares updated on all devices I suddenly top out at 13-15 MB/sec. I've been googling this one for days. I've tried different firmwares including the latest and greatest from dd-wrt hoping to see improvement to no avail. I even contacted ASUS with the issue. They responded telling me to return the router for an exchange. Which I did. The new router showed up and I'm getting the same issue.

When hard wired to the router I easily get over 60 MB/sec so I know the switch is working fine. Another curious note. If I transfer large file from multpile sources, ei.. 1 transfer from the web, 1 transfer from the NAS, I noticed a combine transfer rate of 25 MB/sec from both transfers. This tells me the wireless connection is certainly capable. But off a single file transfer it seams to top out at 15. I have QoS disabled so no prioritizing of bandwidth. Am I missing something here?

How can I open up the pipe on my file sharing? I would very much appreciate any help I can get.

 

[L&LD]

Either roll back the firmware/software on your clients, or try different channels and/or channel widths.

Do you get higher speeds with 5GHz band vs. the 2.4GHz band?

Are you transferring the same size/type of files on these tests?

Have you tried Auto instead of 'N' only?

Was the 60+MB/s speed wired or wireless? Which band/channel?


Hope I have given you some ideas to try.

 

[Helipil0t]

I have tried all of the above. Change in firmwares doesn't seem to affect anything. 5Ghz is the fastest tested at 15 MB/sec. 2.4Ghz tops out at 7.5 MB/sec. I've tried every channel and width combination. Channel 44 seems to be the most effective at 40 mhz. 80 mhz is obviously not supported by my Macs, tried it though with results being the same as 40 mhz. The test file is a 6 gig video file that I've used on every test. I have it locked to N only at the moment. Auto doesn't seem to help. The 60 MB/sec result was wired not wireless. Hope to figure it out some day.
Thanks for the ideas.

 

[wangjunabc]

I have same problem. I connect harddrives through the USB, and at first it is 26MB/S, then it drops to 18MB/S, sometimes 14MB/S, but the connection rate is showing 866Mbps.

It drives me crazy because of the jams during streaming a movie.

I am going to return the router, can anyone tell me does the AC56U has the same problem? Thanks

 

[HokieAl]

I think this is wireless in general.

My RT-AC66U behaves this way, as did my Netgear WNDR3700.

However if your ISP is fast enough and you run Speedtest.net, you'll see that the router easily exceeds wireless G speeds.

 

[Helipil0t]

Fell across something that might help. When I transfer a single file across the network I get a max of 14.5 Megs. I noticed that If I transfer two files simultaneously I'm able to get 19 to 20 Megs combined. Some how OS X is limiting the speed of a single file transfer. Anyone know if this can be changed to open up the pipe?

 

[Helipil0t]

Solved

Figured it all out. Turns out OS X Mavericks is the first version of OS X to use SMB as it's default file protocol. I upgraded from Lion at around the same time as this all started happening. So I connected to my NAS using AFP instead of SMB and voila!! I am now back to 26MB/sec plus!!

 

[RMerlin]

Maverick seems to be a headache when it comes to networking. Other people also discovered it was overly aggressive in putting a wireless radio in low-power mode, causing all sort of performance issues with wifi connections.

 

[admiral2145]

In running ac68u with a freenas box i built... 110 megabytes a sec lan transfers... With wireless ac in getting 45 megabytes at 1300 connection

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

[dixonqwerty]

Figured it all out. Turns out OS X Mavericks is the first version of OS X to use SMB as it's default file protocol. I upgraded from Lion at around the same time as this all started happening. So I connected to my NAS using AFP instead of SMB and voila!! I am now back to 26MB/sec plus!!

How do I choose this? I can see my USB-drive connected to the RT-AC-66U in finder, but how do i change it from SMB to AFP?

 

[ikoul]

I think the Asus routers only support SMB, not AFP. At least, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.

I think OS X falls back to SMB if it can't connect using AFP, but that may have changed in Mavericks as Helipil0t mentioned. Also, he's running a dedicated NAS, so it probably supports a lot of things the router doesn't.

 

[Helipil0t]

Your NAS has to support AFP. Make sure it's enabled on the NAS. Then to force OSX to connect using AFP open finder.. GO > Connect to Server...
and use afp://servername to connect. You can write a quick apple script file to connect all your drives. I use Pathfinder and it shows me both an SMB network share and the AFP share.

Here's the script... You can use the server name instead of an ip if your on the local network. If you're connecting to your network via VPN you have to use the ip address.

set Uname to "username"
set Pword to "password"
set NetworkStorage to "afp://ipaddress/"
mount volume NetworkStorage as user name Uname with password Pword

Replace "username", "password" and ipaddress with your info. Hope this helps...

 

[dixonqwerty]

I only have a USB-drive connected to the router, not a NAS.

Thanks though for answering.

 

[gschlact]

any progress on USB HDD AC68 speeds?

I have spent toooo much time on this already but am hoping for more speed!

AC68, WD Passport 1TB HDD.
Baseline: HDD connected USB3 on Lenovo, I get 90-100+MBytes/sec transfer

Testing using 1.4GB movie file. OR 200+ jpgs (8MB each)

I move the HDD to the USB3 on the ac68 and droppppps by 1/2. (This is after updating stock Firmware to 3.0.0.4.376_1663.
- wireless-> Pro-> Reducing USB 3.0 Interference = Disabled, LAN Jumbo Frame=OFF is better ==> Doubled my speed from 20-25MB/sec to the 40MB write/ 53MB/sec read (wired Lan connect at 1gpps).

CPU Temp = 81C and stays there. CPU loading and memory are low 42% for SMB and still 19% IDLE, and 19,000KB Free memory.

WHAT do I need to do to get back toward the 100MB that the wired Lan can support? Bottleneck appears to be the USB 3.0 support on the Firmware.

Recommendations would be really welcome. Again, remember, I am wired LAN at 1gps.

-Guy
gschlact

 

[gschlact]

related Windows - ASUS usb 3.0 NAS performance issue

I have spent toooo much time on this already but am hoping for more speed!

AC68, WD Passport 1TB HDD.
Baseline: HDD connected USB3 on Lenovo, I get 90-100+MBytes/sec transfer

Testing using 1.4GB movie file. OR 200+ jpgs (8MB each)

I move the HDD to the USB3 on the ac68 and droppppps by 1/2. (This is after updating stock Firmware to 3.0.0.4.376_1663.
- wireless-> Pro-> Reducing USB 3.0 Interference = Disabled, LAN Jumbo Frame=OFF is better ==> Doubled my speed from 20-25MB/sec to the 40MB write/ 53MB/sec read (wired Lan connect at 1gpps).

CPU Temp = 81C and stays there. CPU loading and memory are low 42% for SMB and still 19% IDLE, and 19,000KB Free memory.

WHAT do I need to do to get back toward the 100MB/sec that the wired Lan can support as well as the USB3 HDD? Bottleneck appears to be the USB 3.0 support on the stock Firmware.

Recommendations would be really welcome whether DDWRT and other settings fix this issue. Again, remember, I am wired LAN at 1gps. WHY such a degradation by the Asus USB 3.0 HDD controller? There is still headroom left on the CPU, memory and LAN link.

SEMI RELATED: for the Samba share, I can only see directories under the root folder on the HDD. Why can't I actually share the Root level folder so that I can get at the files in that root folder? HOW can I do this? The asus stock firmware only points to folders below root for sharing. (My Cisco Linksys let me specifically navigate in Linux tree to select the directory to share, including the mnt point directory.

-Guy
gschlact

 

[andychen27]

any progress on USB HDD AC68 speeds?

I have spent toooo much time on this already but am hoping for more speed!

AC68, WD Passport 1TB HDD.
Baseline: HDD connected USB3 on Lenovo, I get 90-100+MBytes/sec transfer

Testing using 1.4GB movie file. OR 200+ jpgs (8MB each)

I move the HDD to the USB3 on the ac68 and droppppps by 1/2. (This is after updating stock Firmware to 3.0.0.4.376_1663.
- wireless-> Pro-> Reducing USB 3.0 Interference = Disabled, LAN Jumbo Frame=OFF is better ==> Doubled my speed from 20-25MB/sec to the 40MB write/ 53MB/sec read (wired Lan connect at 1gpps).

CPU Temp = 81C and stays there. CPU loading and memory are low 42% for SMB and still 19% IDLE, and 19,000KB Free memory.

WHAT do I need to do to get back toward the 100MB that the wired Lan can support? Bottleneck appears to be the USB 3.0 support on the Firmware.

Recommendations would be really welcome. Again, remember, I am wired LAN at 1gps.

-Guy
gschlact

I just got my Ac68u and I have similar problem with you. I tested on my 2015 Macbook pro, and my 2TB WD passport is connected to USB 3.0, reducing usb 3.o interference is disabled and I only get around 50 MB/s over ethernet and around 20MB/s over wireless ac.
Did you finally find out what's the the bottleneck for the low transfer speed?

 

[sfx2000]

I just got my Ac68u and I have similar problem with you. I tested on my 2015 Macbook pro, and my 2TB WD passport is connected to USB 3.0, reducing usb 3.o interference is disabled and I only get around 50 MB/s over ethernet and around 20MB/s over wireless ac.
Did you finally find out what's the the bottleneck for the low transfer speed?

Sounds almost like you're connecting at 2.4GHz vs 5GHz - option-click the Airport menu, and it'll show you which band/channel/mode it's connected as...

 

[andychen27]

Sounds almost like you're connecting at 2.4GHz vs 5GHz - option-click the Airport menu, and it'll show you which band/channel/mode it's connected as...

Actually I am connecting to 5GHz and the tx rate is above 800 Mbps

 

[sfx2000]

Actually I am connecting to 5GHz and the tx rate is above 800 Mbps

Hmmm... ok, so like others in the thread, see how you're attaching to the share - either as AFP or SMB, 10.10.3 defaults to SMB2... so might consider doing AFP instead.

And wireless will always be slower than ethernet - half-duplex and overhead compared to full-duplex on the wire...

 

[andychen27]

Hmmm... ok, so like others in the thread, see how you're attaching to the share - either as AFP or SMB, 10.10.3 defaults to SMB2... so might consider doing AFP instead.

And wireless will always be slower than ethernet - half-duplex and overhead compared to full-duplex on the wire...

Thanks for your advise, afp is a little faster than SMB, about 25 MB/s.